


No Better Than Before

by LadyofAvalon



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 15:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3942271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyofAvalon/pseuds/LadyofAvalon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel dreams of freedom.  She dreams of Neal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Better Than Before

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for a recent challenge (Anywhere But Here) at gameofcards over at LJ. Title from Defeated by Breaking Benjamin.

Rachel dreams of freedom. She dreams of Neal. She dreams of the life they could have had.

Prison is boring. It is mundane. She is used to excitement and the rush of success after success.

This is her greatest failure. She can get herself out at any time. She has had escape routes planned since she set foot in this infernal place. She can survive here. But she does not want to. Her failure is not being caught: it is losing the man she loves.

What she wants is to be Rebecca again. She wants to be the girl who looked into Neal Caffrey’s eyes and knew that she was falling in love with a man who was her equal. She wants to look in his eyes and see that he loves her, too. She saw that once, beneath the walls he puts up.

Being Rebecca was simple. If she closes her eyes she can still pretend that it is not so far away, that she is not waiting for someone to decide that she has outlived her usefulness.

Her borrowed time is gone. The world seems like it is closing in and Rachel has never been closer to tears. It is not so much the freedom that she laments losing as seeing the look in Neal’s eyes after he figured out who she was, that she was a killer and everything he despised. The sorrow, the emptiness, the betrayal – the very thought leaves a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. She can still see that look when she tries to sleep at night.

Being Rachel Turner seems like more of a trap than prison. She wants to escape her past more than she wants to leave the orange jumpsuits and the chains behind. Her identity, who she was – those are heavier chains now. It is suffocating.

When the wardens tell her that Peter Burke wants to speak to her, she knows that the end is coming. That is how it worked for people like her. They live on borrowed time and hers is gone.  


End file.
